Céide Pops it Clogs - Shall we dance?

CÉIDE POPS ITS CLOGS - SHALL WE DANCE?

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

 I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him - Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar

THERE is a difference between writing an obituary and dancing on someone's grave and by the time I am finished this article, I am sure no one will have any doubt as to which of the two I am indulging in here.  (If you have not already guessed when you saw my name under the above headline on the cover.)  I have had occasion to comment upon Céide in the past, after my attention was drawn to the magazine by the late Mgr Cremin.  Mgr Cremin was furious that the pre-launch publicity should advertise a robust respect for dissent.  When it was launched in September 1997, I said:

Céide, my friends, is a bunch of ancient hippies talking to themselves.  For all their talk of imagination and creativity, they offer only the smae worn-out clichés.  Harmless as it seems, this medicine has well-nigh destroyed the Church in Holland, Canada and elsewhere.  These guys just don't get it.  (BR, Issue 33)

I returned to the theme last year:

This [the American National Catholic Reporter] has been the flagship periodical of the American Catholic left since the Second Vatican Council.  It has been losing steam for some time...The United States Catholic left, hard and soft, is losing support.  Would Céide profit by their example (BR, Issue 54)

Signs of the times
Well now, maybe it is time for the National Catholic Reporter to imitate Céide - and fold.  Liberals always talk of the sings of the times and how we must interpret them.  So, let us look at a few signs of the times.  The contrast between the National Catholic Reporter and another American Catholic paper, The Wanderer, was interesting.  Some time ago, both seemed to have similar circulations.  But on investigation, the NCR's source of revenue was due to priests who ordered multiple copies for their churches.  The more conservative Wanderer relied principally on individual subscriptions from laity who went to the trouble to order it in the post.  It takes no logic to deduce which of the two had the greater support of a committed laity.  So what did the signs of the times indicate?  And now, the Wanderer has a clearer lead.

I don't know what the circulation of Céide was.  It may well have been several times that of the Brandsma Review, but I doubt it.  The point is that the Brandsma Review has reached its tenth anniversary (ad multos annos!) since the horrible days in the immediate aftermath of the X Case, and Céide will not see its fifth anniversary.  The Brandsma Review has been for the most part a lay enterprise, notwithstanding the support of Father Brendan Purcell and many other priests over the years - between contributors, promoters and subscribers.  Céide has been first and foremost a clerical initiative, with some lay collaborators.

The Brandsma Review has always been run on a shoestring budget and seeks to present its message unadorned to those who will read it.  Céide, on the other hand, was always an elegant production, complete with coloured photographs and a glossy finish.  The lack of advertisements was sufficient evidence of generous donors.  Nevertheless, the quality of the magazine was not enough to generate the necessary readership to sustain the magazine.  Therefore, why not question the message?
Charter for a People's Church
The editorial team in Céide had absolutely no doubt about the message.  In the final edition, their anonymous critic of ecclesiastical politics, An Ridire (the knight - the only Irish word apparently derived from the German language, from Ritter) spells out what the message is:

The success of the divine conspiracy - enforced accountability, decline of vocations, the growth of lay structures, the end of oppressiveness of clericalism, the sweep of democracy - will ensure the continued implosion of structures that militate against the progress of the Church, sharing the Good News.  The game is up, lads.  God's hand will not be stayed.

I thought this rather ironic.  It came at the end of a charter for a People's Church.  A People's Church which will be governed by lay structures, with

...[a] more creative and compassionate response to issues like divorce and remarriage...the reconstitution of a new priesthood will lead to married clergy and in time the ordination of women.  The next concerted push of the forces of democratisation...will sweep aside the creaky structures that paid too much respect to élites and hierarchies.

To the barracades, comrades!  When I read the above, I heard a choir singing in the back of my head: 

Partiya Lenina, sila narodnaya/Nas k torzhestvu Komunisma vedyot! (Party of Lenin, strength of the People/To Communism's triumph lead us on!)

For those who don't know, I am quoting the Hymn of the Soviet Union.  I am not accusing Der Ritter of being a Stalinist - only of being oblivious to the irony of using this type of rhetoric: the irony is that the game is actually up for Céide rather than for Our Mother, the Church.
On the margins? 
Since the first Pentecost, the Church has seen a lot of demagogues come and go, preaching all sorts of weird and wonderful things, just as she has seen all sorts of prophets of doom attacking her from the other side.  But Céide seems to have been frozen  into its own particular historical and geographical groove, unable in a serious way to engage either with contemporary cultures or - very importantly for Catholics (the Church does teach that tradition is a source of revelation) - with all the previous generations of Catholics in this and other Catholic cultures.  And the Céide people are themselves an élite and a hierarchy of sorts, supremely confident that they know best.

Céide forever prided itself on being on the margins.  Was it really?  It attracted some very heavyweight writers over the years.  It was very happy challenging the Church hierarchy, but did not relish opposing something like The Irish Times or the intelligentsia in this country.  Its target audience were not the underprivileged in Irish society - given the price and content of Céide and its failure to address their real concerns.

 The general views of this country's underclass on travellers and refugees, for example, would make the hair stand up straight or many politically-correct heads.  The only thing marginal about the magazine was how insignificant the Céide team were in the context of the bigger picture and how this reality was lost on them.
More mediaeval view
I am not sure any more if, strictly speaking, Céide was on the Left.  In some ways it was quite conservative.  I was personally educated in the Enlightenment ethos (which I have substantially rejected).  One of its tenets was the separation of Church and State and another was universal freedom of religion and conscience.

In one sense, it is of little significance how few in this country profess or practice Catholicism.  If it is a small minority, it is our duty to act as witnesses to the Faith in the hope of conversion through example, but we may not force the faith on anyone.  The Céide team seemed to have a more mediaeval view of the organic connexion between Church, State and society, believing society must be maintained within the Church at all costs.

If this meant the Church must embrace the mores of society, they seemed to regard this as preferable to writing off huge numbers of members.  Céide tended towards a form of Erastianism, based as much on public opinion as secular authority.  The imperative seemed to be to keep the 95% of citizens of the 26 counties who are nominally Catholic still actually calling themselves Catholic, in spite of deviations in faith and morals by a great proportion of them.
Crowning with Thorns
It would have been salutary for the Céide team to have reflected on the Third Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, the Crowning with Thorns.  Listen to the mob before Pilate: "We have no king but Caesar!"  Our Lord, with the mock crown on His head, clearly announces to Pilate that His kingdom is not of this world.  The Céide worldview did not seem to acknowledge the subtle distinction between sacred and secular authority.  You do not deny the kingship of Christ just to accommodate the crowd.

Given that Der Ritter gives divorce as an example of creative compassion, I seem to recall a particular divorce case where some creative compassion was demanded.  A certain progressive and very successful cleric reckoned he could acquire an annulment for his employer and failed, ending his life with the words "If only I served God as well as I have served my king..."  A reactionary layman stood up to the king at the time, at the cost of his life - and proclaimed himself at the scaffold to be "the king's good servant, but God's first".  If they don't know what I am talking about here, the writers in Céide would do well to rent the video A Man for All Seasons for a night.

 Well, Céide have not succeeded in accommodating the crowd.  Instead they have faded into oblivion, largely unnoticed by the world around them.  They have not impressed a new vision on the Catholic faithful in Ireland.  And for all their trumpet blowing, the desired innovations within the Church are as far away as ever.  And last time I checked, John Paul II was still Pope.

I do not believe this is the last we will hear from the Céide team - they will still be around for some time.  But they will not be so fast to launch a magazine like this again.  Their support base is not growing.  It is dwindling.

Now, can anybody strike up a hornpipe?  I think I want to dance.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 61, July-August 2002 

The National Way - Where?

THE NATIONAL WAY - WHERE?

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

WHERE do St Thomas More and Samuel Butler have nowhere in common?  Thus runs an old trick question.  The answwere is that they both wrote books entitled "Nowhere": More's Utopia is derived from the Greek ou topos (not place) and Butler's Erewhon is an anagram for nowhere.

In a collection of 14 essays entitled The National Way Forward, Justin Barrett attempts to map the path ahead for Ireland.  He reflects upon the position of our country, the so-called Celtic Tiger, in the aftermath of the X Case, the Maastricht Treaty, the divorce referendum and the Amsterdam Treaty.  He analyses Ireland from a political, economic and moral point of view and proposes some long-term solutions to what he sees as the current crisis.

I believe this is a book which the Pro-Life Campaign should have read and taken to heart prior to the March referendum.  Published well before the Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy Bill, it contains the following observation:

Surely we knew the Supreme Court was politically appointed and, if the Government were not Pro-Life, the Court could not indefinitely remain so?  Surely, we must have understood that a Pro-Life Amendment, no matter how cleverly crafted, could not survive deliberate malevolence on the part of ideologically motivated Justices?  That, plainly, constitutional prohibition on abortion could not forever resist both a hostile legislature and a hostile judiciary?

And there is the most basic question - IF WE DID NOT UNDERSTAND IT THEN, DO WE UNDERSTAND THAT NOW?

If we do not, then it is, as the saying goes, all over bar the shouting.  For new referendum or not, the forces fighting for Life will have committed the cardinal error of short-sightedness and narrow focus, which must inevitably deliver this country up to legalised and widespread abortion - and sooner rather than later.  (The National Way Forward, p. 16, emphasis in original)

So, in his examination of the X Case and its fall out, Mr Barrett seems to dismiss the practicality of any further pro-life amendment, let alone one with a specific wording.  In his analysis of recent Irish history, the X Case is pivotal to the direction the nation has taken, but his treatment of the case in the book's first essay caricatures the issue by subjecting the court to pop-psychoanalysis, and introduces a novel conspiracy theory to which the Hederman judgement can be regarded a key.  There is no doubt that all pro-lifers found the majority judgement in X to be deeply shocking.  But Mr Barrett's conclusion above is unhelpful, to say the least.

Conspiracy theory

In regard to the other meditations, it could be said that Mr Barrett's Weltanschauung is one that follows the masthead of this journal: Pro Vita, Pro Ecclesia Dei, et Pro Hibernia.  However, I do not think too many of the Brandsma Review's commentators would follow him down the roads he takes.  One can sympathise with an economic analysis that is critical of usury and the notion of money.  However, most of us would recognise the importance of both to the global economy.  For all the many faults of the present system, it would be unrealistic and a waste of energy to work on an alternative.

And peddling versions for a conspiracy theory substantially the same as that found in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Sion is not going to help either.  International finance may well have been behind the October Revolution of 1917, but as long as it remains unproved, it is at least unwise to publish the idea as established fact.

In regard to this country, Mr Barrett is right to see moral bankruptcy cutting across Irish society.  But some of his solutions are problematic.  For example, replacing the Oireachtas with a popularly elected executive president with absolute discretion to appoint a cabinet and without any formal opposition is, let us say, worrying.  Then one recalls that in the Republic, the leitmotiv is Plato's wish for a time when philosophers would be kings and kings philosophers.  Colloquially, this may be translated as "I want to be in charge".  But there the comparison between Plato and Mr Barrett ends - even if much of the latter's thought displays an idealisation of Spartan frugality, also evident in Plato.  This idealisation has appeared again and again in western thought: de Valera, whom Mr Barrett despises, was also an admirer of Sparta.

Questionable assertions

Some of Mr Barrett's historical assertions are questionable.  The idolisation of Michael Collins is not founded on wide reading of the 1916-1922 period, and the suggestion that W. T. Cosgrave ordered his shooting would require a lot more evidence than the conjecture offered.

Moving to our own times, Mr Barrett seems to think we can do business with Sinn Féin, as he doesn't think most of its supporters have much in common with the party's socialist platform.  But Sinn Féin's socialist manifesto must surely be taken absolutely seriously.  Sinn Féin have made political gains in the North, and to a lesser extent in the south, on their stated platform.  To think that one can make a deal with them on the basis of some understood alternative agenda that would be more palatable to us, is ludicrous. 

For a long time now, the bulk of the Provisional IRA members have adopted the philosophy and methodology of Marxist guerrillas; and most of the student influx into Sinn Féin has been due to the left-wing anti-establishment marketing of the party following the H-Block hunger-strike election gains.  Maybe their politics have moderated, but this process would need to go a lot further before we could have dealings with them.

Mr Barrett is very dismissive of the SDLP.  I too would criticise the SDLP's adoption of a socialist masthead, and its fruitless association with the British Labour Party and the European socialist parties at Strasbourg.  But it is wrong to dismiss the party which commands the vote of so many nationalists in Northern Ireland at local government and assembly levels.  Until Sinn Féin seriously alters its policies on socio-moral issues - especially on abortion - the SDLP must be preferred by nationalist pro-lifers.

In  regard to Mr Barrett's view on the European Union and further European integration, I have one observation.  I am a Eurosceptic; I have opposed every step toward European integration since the Single European Act of 1987 (I was far too young to vote against joining the Common Market in 1972).  But in spite of all Europe's difficulties, I would not anticipate a European analogue of the American Civil War as he does.

On constitutional matters,  I would not share Mr Barrett's admiration for America's Revolution and Constitution.  The Irish Constitution of 1937 in fact substantially follows Anglo-American democracy, with concessions to the French revolutionary tradition, to Catholic and secular schools of natural law and even with Fascism (the title An Taoiseach and the vocational compostion of Seanad Éireann) and with Communism (look very carefully at Article 43, on private property rights).

The one serious fault I would find in Bunreacht na hÉireannn is the lack of any meaningful separation of powers.  But this is the result of a strong party whip system - an accidental result of our constitution rather than something directly envisaged in it.

To return to the original point of this review: we just have to live with the fact that written constitutions are subject to creative interpretations in court.  This has even manifested itself in civil law jurisdictions.  To give a recent example, the German Supreme Court found crucifixes in Bavarian schools, hospitals and other public buildings to be repugnant to the German Constitution.  The Bavarian people successfully resisted this.

The chapter on the Church I found to be the most unhelpful, as it is very vague about the crisis in Western Catholicism and it proposes no concrete solutions whatsoever.  Mr Barrett also uses terminology such as "traditionalism" and "traditional Catholicism" without defining them.  There are many conflicting ideas about what these terms mean.

The Barrett book is part soap-box oration, part undergraduate monologue proposing solutions to the world's problems over coffee.  I have some advice for the Justin Barrett PR team: never allow your client use photographs of himself with open mouth, midstream in a stirring rally.  It looks like he's ranting.  If the media want to label Mr Barrett as Ireland's answer to Vladimir Zhiranovsky, it is inadvisable to hand them an invitation to do so.

Secondly, do not mention the Gaelic language or the inability of the populace to speak it, if the fada does not appear once in the book, and Irish words are almost uniformly spelt incorrectly.  And do not assume that either the Irish people or the media are stupid.  It tends to provoke a negative reaction.

The National Way Forward is published by the Guild Press, Longford.  194pp.  €7.55

The Brandsma Review, Issue 62, September-October 2002